


Day 1

by wehangout



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: AU after 4.12, Angst, Bipolar Disorder, M/M, Smut, off-screen infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 09:24:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3524087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wehangout/pseuds/wehangout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day 2: Fiona comes over. You hide the fucking knives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 1

**Author's Note:**

> The usual thanks to the wonderful [Dee](im-not-his-keeper.tumblr.com) for reading over this for me
> 
> And so, so, so many thanks to [Karen](http://palepinkgoat.tumblr.com/) for being so honest and open while helping me with this. It taught me a lot, and I really, REALLY appreciate it.

**Day 1:** Ian doesn’t get out of bed. You don’t know if he’s sick or tired or just being a lazy fuck, but he doesn’t get out of bed. So you go about your day - coffee, fucked up conversation with Svetlana, work, home - and Ian is still in bed.

 **Day 2:** Fiona comes over. You hide the fucking knives.

**Day 4:** You’ve come up with a new plan: Let Ian Be.

If he wants to spend his days in bed, then who the fuck are you to stop him? Mandy gives you a look when you tell her, but you ignore it. It makes fucking sense, not wanting to get out of bed. It’s something you definitely fucking get because, Jesus, life is a shit hole most of the time, and no one wants to live through that.

Except that you do.

You didn’t. For a while there, after Ian first spent the night and before you found him in that fucking club, you didn’t want to live your life. You spent so fucking long fantasising about stupid other lives you could’ve had - ones where your mom had lived, ones where Terry hadn’t, ones where you and Ian would run off together …

And now, with Terry out of the picture and Ian in it … it’s like everything’s fallen into place. You’ve finally got the life you want - whore wife and unplanned child aside - and you just want to live it. With Ian. You want to be happy and stupid and do dumb things with your boyfriend

But he doesn’t want to. So you don’t make him.

 **Day 8:** Ian gets up. Ian showers. Ian eats half a dozen eggs. He sits on the couch and watches movies with Mandy. He doesn’t speak, but he smiles at Ron Burgundy’s stupidity, and when you sit next to him, close enough to share heat, he relaxes against you.

And that’s it. He’s out of bed, eating and smiling and showering, so that’s it. He’s better, he’s good, he’s happy again. You go to sleep that night, your head on his chest and his arms around you.

 **Day 9:** Ian doesn’t get out of bed.

 **Day 10:** You try. You try so fucking hard, because you have to, because you need to, because now you’re really fucking worried. He got out of bed. He got out and he was _good._ Sure, he wasn’t his usual self, but he was there and he was okay. So you try - you use encouraging words, you make stupid promises, you tell him how awesome the movie playing in the living room is.

When it doesn’t work, you try another tactic - you cook him his favourite pasta, bring him his favourite soda, buy him his favourite ice cream. You tell him dumb jokes, you read him some articles from that stupid magazine he likes, you put on that CD he’s really into. You bring in beer, books, burritos, and nothing.

Nothing.

 **Day 12:** You don’t get out of bed.

You lie in bed, wearing no more than Ian, and attach yourself to him. You wrap your arms around his waist, press your chest to his back, nuzzle your face into his neck, and you talk and talk and talk. Too much, not enough, you don’t know, but you don’t stop.

You tell him how you want him to be okay, but that it’s okay if he’s not. You tell him you’re gonna stick around, either way. You tell him that, whatever’s going on, you’ll figure it out, the two of you, together.

You tell him about your mom, about growing up with Terry, about Mandy as a kid. You tell him how Iggy isn’t’ too bad, considering what an idiot he is. You tell him there’s a fifty-fifty part of you that thinks Terry is responsible for you mom’s death. You tell him you blame Terry one-hundred percent for you mom’s death.

You whisper promises and apologies, admit things you’ve never said before, tell him over and over again that you won’t give up on him. You nose between his shoulder blades and tell him how sorry you are for marrying Svetlana, promise to make every fucking thing you did wrong up to him, you swear over and over and over again to be better this time. To be worth his time.

You pull the blankets over both of your heads and tell him how jealous you were when you saw him with the old guy, how much it hurt that you weren’t the only one he was fucking anymore, how stupid you were for not saying something sooner. For saying anything at all that day at the Kash and Grab after Frank caught you.

And then tears form when you try to continue, and you try to keep them back, you really fucking do, but Ian’s doing nothing but lying there, careful inhales and exhales, his hot breath trailing over the skin of your hand where you grip his tightly. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t curl into you, he doesn’t do anything. So you let the tears fall, but only two or three. After that you fight them back and keep talking, push out the words that you’ve never told a soul.

You tell him how scared you were _that_ day, how at first it was just shock that Terry was there, that it had finally happened, that he had caught you. And then it was anger and fear and this insane need to protect, to protect Ian. Because, really, there’s not a single fucking _sane_ reason you can think of for jumping on your old man’s back that day, for trying to get him away from Ian.

Well, there’s the obvious reason, but now’s really not the time.

So you keep talking, and hot tears fall freely, but you don’t try to stop them. You just tell Ian everything you should have told him months and month ago - that you missed him, that you should have tried harder, that you’re so, so, _so_ sorry for that day on the roof.

You tell him that you shouldn’t have let him leave.

Then you tell him you wish you had left with him.

 **Day 13:** You fall asleep mid sentence, having talked to a non-responsive Ian for as long as you could.

When you wake, Ian is tracing the curves of your face with his index finger, eyes red and lips dry. You cup his cheek in your palm, call it progress.

 **Day 15:** Ian gets up. Ian cooks pancakes. Ian goes for a run.

You don’t get your hopes up.

 **Day 17:** Ian asks for his job back. You’re too relieved to try and talk him out of it.

 **Day 22:** Ian doesn’t come home after his shift. You can’t help it. You don’t want to be that guy who sits up all night, waiting and wondering, but you are. You absolutely fucking are, and for too many reasons.

Ian hasn’t been well. You’re worried about him.

Ian never said anything about all your confessions. You’re worried you scared him off.

Ian’s taken off before. You’re not sure you’re enough to keep him around this time.

You call and you call, but he doesn’t pick up. Two hours after his shift finished, he finally call you.

He’s in a motel room, high as fuck, wearing nothing but a saggy pair of jeans. Your heart aches at the sight of him, at the sickly pale colour of his skin, at the bites along his neck and shoulders, the way he won’t look at you. And you don’t know what to do. You just don’t fucking know.

So you call Fiona.

And while you wait, you wrap a towel around Ian and try to figure out what the fuck is going on. Not with him - you’ve been trying to figure that out for three weeks now, and to no avail - but with yourself and how you feel and what you do and don’t want to know, because Ian’s wearing jeans that aren’t his and you know his just-fucked expression better than anyone.

So you just sit next to him, quietly staring at the ground, waiting for Fiona. When she finally gets there, she hugs and makes a fuss and then goes to call Lip. While she’s gone, Ian turns to you, eyes clear of whatever drug-induced haze he had been in, but brimming with tears.

“I’m sorry, Mick.”

You don’t know what to say. So you say nothing.

 **Day 23:** Ian doesn’t get out of bed.

 **Day 24:** Ian doesn’t speak, to anyone. Not even to tell Lip to fuck right off when he compares him to Monica. Mandy does that for him.

 **Day 25:** The full realisation of what Ian did in that hotel room hits you and you spend the day bent over the toilet.

 **Day 26:** Ian still doesn’t get out of bed. You sleep on the couch.

 **Day 27:** Fiona comes back. She insist on getting Ian institutionalised. You agree.

You agree to be the one to tell him.

 **Day 28:** Ian cries. Real fucking tears and sobs rack his body as he pleads with you not to do this, not to send him away. He grips your hand tightly, crawls out of bed, and literally gets to his knees and begs. He promises to get better, to stop doing drugs and working at the club. He swears he never meant to hurt you, that’s he’s more sorry than you could ever imagine, that it was all just a huge mistake.

He looks at you, tells you he loves you, and you don’t know if he’s telling you the truth.

But you tell him to go back to bed, to get some sleep, that he can stay.

He whispers your name once he’s tucked back in bed, asks if you forgive him.

You don’t say anything.

 **Day 30:** You leave Ian to Mandy. You spend the day trying to figure out if you’re angrier at Ian or yourself.

Fiona gives you a look of nothing but pity when she visits.

 **Day 31:** You wake up on the couch, so early your head isn’t sure if you’re drunk or hung over, to a rustling going on in the front yard. Swiping a gun out of the locked cabinet, you tip-toe over to the window and see Ian standing outside. Fucking naked.

Before anything else - before the fear, the confusion, the worry - there’s a resigned sigh.

Then the fear runs through you, the confusion, the worry, but he doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything, let alone something that could harm him. So you wait and watch as he lights a match and throws it into the bin in front of him. A small fire starts - your heart thuds a little harder as the worry increases - and then he bends down to pick something up off the wet ground.

Jeans. Even in the light of the fire you can see that he’s holding a pair of jeans, and you put the gun down and hurry outside, ask him what the fuck he’s doing, why the fuck is he burning his clothes, try to make him stop. But he just looks at you, eyes calm - too, too, too calm - and tells you he doesn’t know whose jeans they are.

He throws them in the fire, mutters things about making it right, forgetting all the bad, starting anew, and you don’t say anything, because you’re scared of what might come out of your mouth if you do.

Ian doesn’t go back to bed.

 **Day 32:** Ian’s gone when you wake up. You try not to worry - something you don’t seem to be getting any better at - but when midafternoon rolls around you can’t help but call him.

He tells you he’s looking for a job, has two interviews the following day, and the promise of casual work where Fiona works if any comes up.

Ian goes to bed at a reasonable time. He kisses your cheek goodnight, smiles that smile he smiles, and asks if you’ll be joining him tonight.

You do.

You want to call it progress, but you know better.

 **Day 34:** You go looking for Debbie. You can’t pinpoint why it’s her you go looking for, when Fiona and Lip have much more experience than her, but you do it anyway. Maybe it’s because she checked in on Ian that second day, maybe it’s because she’s still just a sweet kid, maybe it’s because you feel like she’ll get it. She’ll get it, when you’re not even sure you do.

You don’t say much. You don’t have to. She asks a lot of fucking questions, and you answer every fucking one of them - sometimes yes or no answers, sometimes novel-length answers that she listens so fucking intently to.

By the time you go, you know the answer is meds, but it feels so far away.

 **Day 38:** Ian doesn’t shut up. You always knew the guy was a talker, but this is something else - he makes plans to build a veggie garden now that it’s beginning to warm up, suggests the two of you should join a gym, tells Svetlana about every _Pretty Woman_ reference from every movie he can think of.

Over lunch he smirks at your stupid jokes, hold your hand under the table, stares at you for way too long. He asks Fiona for the pie recipes, claiming he wants to get into baking, and asks you what your favourites are.

That evening, he puts loud music on and starts baking. You go to grab a beer, tell him he looks ridiculous dancing in the kitchen with flour all over his face, but he just grin and grabs you. Presses into you. Tries to get you to dance with him. And he laughs, an honest-to-God laugh as you try to wriggle away and he nuzzles your neck.

You go to bed smiling, Ian already passed out next to you.

 **Day 39:** Ian wakes you with one hand loosely wrapped around you cock, the other gently pressing two lubed fingers against your asshole. For a fleeting moment you think of him in that hotel room, wearing someone else’s jeans, but then he whisper in your ear how fucking much he’s missed you and you melt into him with a far too willing moan. He makes you come like that - fingers up your ass and around your dick - and then fucks you until you come again, tired and messy and so fucking in love.

He eyes you all through breakfast, smirks at you over his coffee, rubs his toes up your bare leg, and it’s too much and it’s just like before. And with Mandy and Svetlana sitting at the table with you, there’s not much you can do but flip him off and head for the shower. Ian joins you, presses against you, hot and soapy, begs in murmurs for you to suck his dick, and of course you fucking do.

He walks into the Alibi around dinner time, tells you he needs to speak with you urgently, then ruts against you in the men’s toilet until you both come in your jeans like fourteen year olds.

He fucks you twice more that night, but only after rimming you in the shower until your knees are weak and your groans are hoarse whimpers.

 **Day 41:** Ian comes home from wherever the fuck he’s been looking ten pounds heavier. You stare at him, ask him what the fuck’s going on, but he just looks at you with wide eyes and opens his coat.

Boxes fall out. Boxes of shit that’s so clearly unnecessary. Alarms. Flashlights. Outdoor lights. Security lights. Window locks. Door locks. Bolts. Chains. More alarms. Sensor lights. A fucking alarm siren.

You stare at him in shock, ask him again what the fuck is going on, but he just shrugs.

“Better to be safe than sorry, right?”

 **Day 42:** Ian doesn’t sleep. He spends all night and all the next day installing every alarm, lock, and light he stole.

 **Day 45:** Ian stops going to work when Fiona’s boss calls him in. He spends his days walking around inside the house, checking out every window in every room, and you have no fucking idea what he’s looking for.

 **Day 46:** You ask what’s got him so worried.

When he says _Terry,_ you have to fight the choked up sob that wants to escape.

 **Day 48:** Ian builds a fort right in front of the living room window. He grabs his old ROTC sleeping bag and spreads it on the floor beneath the sheets acting as a roof. Then he looks at you, dead in the eye, and demands you give him one of the guns. You do, and he looks at you with nothing but betrayal when he sees it’s not loaded.

Then he sits in his fort and he watches out the front window, muttering things about homophobic pricks who should still be in prison, psycho pieces of shit who he would happily beat to death, and rape.

He doesn’t sleep for three days.

 **Day 52:** You don’t know what to do.

This - _this_ Ian, this pacing, yelling, gun-wielding Ian - isn’t an Ian you’ve seen before, and you’ve seen a lot of fucking Ian’s.

You’ve seen Ian as a goddamn kid, doing his best to protect you from his boss who just shot you; Ian, tall and happy and smiling and willing and fun and eager and carefree; Ian, scared and angry and hurt and sad, begging and pleading with you to stand up for yourself; Ian, high on fuck knows what, and _doing_ fuck knows what for said drugs.

But you’ve never seen him like this. Ranting, raving, fanatical - and scared. You can see the absolute panic in his eyes as he stares at Mandy, the hurt and betrayal, the pain at what he thinks she’s done and his own confusion over it all.

You step forward, try to intervene, but he lifts his arm, the one holding the gun. And the thing is, you don’t know if the gun’s loaded. It’s not the gun you gave him three days ago, the gun cabinet is open, lock picked, and you don’t know if he’s pointing a loaded gun at your sister.

“You’ve always been angry,” he whispers, voice harsh and so unlike him. “Angry that we never told you, that we kept it from you for so long, that we had something you didn’t. You were _jealous,_ weren’t you?”

Mandy says nothing, but her eyes are wide and her chin trembles, and you know she’s more hurt by Ian’s words than she is scared of the gun in his hand.

“That’s why you did it, isn’t it? That’s why you got Terry out, so he could come here and kill us. Isn’t is? _Isn’t it_!”

It all happens so suddenly - the blank look that cloaks Ian’s face, the still silence of the room, the twitch you barely see of his finger on the trigger. You move without thinking, not sure if this is actually happening or if you’re overreacting - and, if it is happening, are you about to try and protect the right person? Because _hide the knives_ is a constant in your head, but you shove Mandy out of the way and feel thankful - so disturbingly _thankful_ \- that Ian was aiming for your sister, not himself.

Silence follows silence. There’s no ringing in your ears from the blast of a gun going off in your small living room, no scream as led meets flesh, nothing. Just you and Mandy staring at Ian, as Ian looks down at the gun in his trembling hand.

He drops it, the clatter of it hitting the floor so fucking loud it’s deafening, and continues to gape at his empty hand. You take a few steps closer to him, slowly, cautious, and he lifts his eyes to look at you.

Everything inside of you shakes and crumbles at the horror and tears in his eyes, and you pause, wary of his reaction, of what he might do if you get too close.

“Mick,” he whispers, and slumps to his knees. You’re on him immediately, hands gripping his face, his shoulders, his hands. You hold him everywhere he’ll let you, press your face to his.

“Ian? Ian, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

His tears fall. “I‘m so sorry.”

 **Day 53:** Ian checks himself into the hospital.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Come say hi to me on [tumblr!](wehangout.tumblr.com)


End file.
